I trust you will have approved my behaviour at court, that is, my mixing extreme politeness with extreme indifference. Our predecessors, the philosophers of ancient days, knew not how to be disinterested without brutality; I pique myself on founding a new sect. My followers are to tell kings, with excess of attention, that they don't want them, and to despise favour with more good-breeding than others practise in suing for it. We are a thousand times a greater nation than the Grecians; why are we to imitate them! Our sense is as great, our follies greater; sure we have all the pretensions to superiority! Adieu. 3 Yours ever. P. S. As to the fair widow B-n,3 I assure you the devil never sowed two hundred thousand pounds in a more fruitful soil; every guinea has taken root already. I saw her yesterday; it shall be some time before I see her again. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Arlington-street, November 4, 1760. I AM not gone to Houghton, you see; my lord Orford is come to town, and I have persuaded him to stay and perform decencies. King George the second is dead richer than sir Robert Brown, though perhaps not so rich as my lord Hardwicke. He has left fifty thousand pounds between the duke, Emily, and Mary; the duke has given up his share. To lady Yarmouth a cabinet, with the contents; they call it eleven thousand pounds. By a German deed he gives the duke to the value of one hundred and eighty thousand pounds, placed on mortgages, not immediately recoverable. He had once given him twice as much more, then revoked it, and at last excused the revocation, on the pretence of the expenses of the war; but owns he was the best son that ever lived, and had never offended him; a pretty strong comment on the affair of Closterseven! He gives him, besides, all 3 Lady Brown. [Ed.] The capitulation in 1757, called the treaty of Closterseven, by which the Duke of Cumberland commanding 38,000 Hanoverians was obliged to surrender to the French under Marshall D'Estrees. [Ed.] his jewels in England; but had removed all the best to Hanover, which he makes crown jewels, and his successor residuary legatee. The duke too has some uncounted cabinets. My lady Suffolk has given me a particular of his jewels, which plainly amount to one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It happened oddly to my lady Suffolk. Two days before he died, she went to make a visit at Kensington, not knowing of the review; she found herself hemmed in by coaches, and was close to him, whom she had not seen for so many years, and to my lady Yarmouth; but they did not know her; it struck her, and has made her very sensible to his death. 2 The changes hang back. Nothing material has been altered yet. Ned Finch, the only thing my lady Yarmouth told the new king she had to ask for, is made surveyor of the roads, in the room of sir Harry Erskine, who is to have an old regiment. He excuses himself from seeing company, as favourite of the favourite. Arthur is removed from being clerk of the wine-cellar, a sacrifice to morality! The archbishop has such hopes of the young king, that he is never out of the circle. He trod upon the duke's foot on Sunday, in the haste of his zeal; the duke said to him, "My lord, if your grace is in such a hurry to make your court, that is the way." Bon-mots come thicker than changes. Charles Townshend, receiving an account of the impression the king's death had made, was told Miss Chudleigh cried. "What," said he, "Oysters?" And last night Mr. Dauncey, asking George Selwyn if princess Amelia would have a guard? he replied, "Now and then one, I suppose." An extraordinary event has happened to-day; George Townshend sent a challenge to lord Albemarle, desiring him to be with a second in the fields. Lord Albemarle took colonel Crawford, and went to Mary-bone; George Townshend bespoke lord Buckingham, who loves a secret too well not to tell it: he communicated it to Stanley, who went to St. James's, and acquainted Mr. Caswall, the captain on guard. The latter took a hackney-coach, drove to Mary-bone, and saw one pair. After 2 Brother of the earl of Winchelsea, noted for the darkness of his complexion, which is elsewhere noticed by Walpole, who says 'as black as Ned Finch.' The family generally were very swarthy, on which account they were styled in one of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams' odes: 'The Black funereal Finches.' [Ed.] waiting ten minutes, the others came; Townshend made an apology to lord Albemarle for making him wait-" Oh!" said he, "Men of spirit don't want apologies; come, let us begin what we came for." At that instant, out steps Caswall from his coach, and begs their pardon, as his superior officers, but told them they were his prisoners; he desired Mr. Townshend and lord Buckingham to return to their coach, he would carry back lord Albemarle and Crawford in his. He did, and went to acquaint the king, who has commissioned some of the matrons of the army to examine the affair, and make it up. All this while, I don't know what the quarrel was, but they hated one another so much on the duke's account, that a slight word would easily make their aversions boil over. Don't you, nor even your general, come to town on this occasion? Good night! Yours ever. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Arlington-street, November 13, 1760. EVEN the honey-moon of a new reign don't produce events every day. There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and kissing hands. The chief difficulty is settled; lord Gower yields the mastership of the horse to lord Huntingdon, and removes to the great wardrobe, from whence sir Thomas Robinson was to have gone into Ellis's place, but he is saved. The city however have a mind to be out of humour; a paper has been fixed on the Royal Exchange, with these words—“ No petticoat government, no Scotch minister, no lord George Sackville;" two hints totally unfounded, and the other scarce true. No petticoat ever governed less; it is left at Leicester-house; lord George's breeches are as little concerned; and, except lady Susan Stuart1 and sir Harry Erskine, nothing has yet been done for any Scots. Scots. For the king himself, he seems all good-nature, and wishing to satisfy every body; all his speeches are obliging. 1 Lady Susan Stuart was appointed lady of the bed-chamber to the princess Augusta. [Ed.] 2 Sir Harry Erskine received the Colonelcy of the 67th Foot. [Ed.] I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to find the levee room had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. This sovereign don't stand in one spot, with his eyes fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of German news; he walks about and speaks to every body. I saw him afterwards on the throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with dignity, and reads his answers to addresses well; it was the Cambridge address, carried by the duke of Newcastle in his doctor's gown, and looking like the medecin malgrè lui. He had been vehemently solicitous for attendance, for fear my lord Westmoreland, who vouchsafes himself to bring the address from Oxford, should out-number him. Lord Litchfield and several other jacobites have kissed hands; George Selwyn says, "They go to St. James's, because now there are so many Stuarts there. Do you know I had the curiosity to go to the burying t'other night; I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it was, the easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The prince's chamber3, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that chamber. The procession, through a line of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside, their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback, the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute guns,—all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey so illuminated, that one saw it to greater advantage than by day; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof, all appearing distinctly, and with the happiest chiara scuro. There wanted nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain of its not being catholic enough. I had been in dread of being coupled with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were 3 The funeral of George the second, took place on the 11th of November; the procession marched from the Prince's chamber near the House of Peers,, whither it had been removed from Kensington on the preceding night, to the great north door of Westminster Abbey. [Ed.] 4 not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel of Henry the seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or would; the yeomen of the guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly, and blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter, Man that is born of a woman, was chaunted, not read, and the anthem, besides being immensurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had a dark-brown adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant: his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes, and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; think how unpleasant a situation! He bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass, to spy who was or who was not there, spying with one hand, and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of catching cold; and the duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round, found it was the duke of Newcastle standing upon his train, to avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down into the vault, where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with lights. Clavering, the groom of the bed-chamber, refused to sit up with the body, and was dismissed by the king's order. I have nothing more to tell you, but a trifle, a very trifle. The king of Prussia has totally defeated marshal Daun.5 This 4 Dr. Zacharey Pearce, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. [Ed.] 5 On the 3d of November at Torgua, after an engagement which lasted from two in the afternoon until nine at night. [Ed.] |